Oaths and Expertise: The Bioethical Consequences of Health Policy as Medical Decision-Making

In this session, participants will explore the shifting health policy climate towards one that is more pervasive and invasive in medical practice. Whether via bans on youth gender care, curtailing of publicly funded insurance eligibility, or policies that shape access to reproductive healthcare (to name just a few), the laws, litigation and regulations that impact access to medical care are exerting more power over the pursuit of health than ever before.  Dr. McNamara will review the history of health policy in pediatrics and reproductive medicine up until present day and explore emerging trends. She will then build the argument that policy functions as medical care, and operates without the self-regulating guardrails that shape medical practice. If we hold health policy to bioethical standards, perhaps we can conceptualize an idealized framework by which policy and healthcare should intersect.

Learning Objectives: After this webinar, attendees will be able to:

• Define policy, health policy, the social contract and bioethically sound health policy.
• Describe the past and present relationships between policy and healthcare with historical examples.
• Conceptualize emerging trends in health policy and apply bioethical principles to their impacts.
• Build a shared understanding of effective engagement in health policy development processes.

This is an event of the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs (OACA), hosted by the Center for Bioethics.

Speaker(s)

Meredithe McNamara, MD, MS, FAAP, is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine and Affiliate Faculty in the Yale Institute for Global Health. Dr. McNamara is a board-certified pediatrician and Adolescent Medicine specialist who provides full spectrum healthcare to adolescents and young adults aged 11-25. This care encompasses, among others, mental health, substance use, eating disorders, sexual health, menstrual disorders, harm reduction, gender diversity, and general primary care in community and school-based settings. In addition to her work as a practicing clinician, she conducts research on scientific disinformation in health policy that impacts youth access to healthcare. As the Co-Director of the Integrity Project, her research and writing is operationalized in policy processes via testimony, public comments and litigation. She has testified in several state-based litigation processes challenging state-level bans on youth gender care, and before US Congress. She has co-authored numerous amicus briefs, including one filed with the US Supreme Court. Her work is inherently multi-disciplinary and she collaborates with legal/policy scholars, bioethicists, scientific subject matter experts and, most importantly, members of the communities most impacted by policies of interest.